Hood River legislators fight minimum wage hike

SB 1532 clears Senate, onto House

Photo by Kirby Neumann-ReaWORKERS stow pears at Diamond Fruit packing house in Odell. A bill to raise Oregon’s minimum wage in three regional tiers — with Hood River County in the middle group — has cleared the Senate and moved on to the House for a floor vote.

Rep. Mark Johnson (R-Hood River) said he’s also giving a thumbs down to the bill, which is slated for a vote on the House floor before the end of the week.

“I’m not going to be able to support it,” Johnson said. “There would be a lot of consequences and not a favorable situation (in terms of) economics.”

He heard “loud and clear” from his constituents, especially the agriculture community and small businesses, who predicted that sharply raised labor costs — along with an inability to flex commodity prices — would harm their trade.

Johnson represents House District 52, which encompasses Hood River, Sandy, Corbett, Estacada, and parts of Gresham.

He said he heard from a wide variety of concerned citizens, from shop owners on Oak Street in Hood River to residents of Troutdale and east Gresham, where some citizens feel they’d be unfavorably “lumped in” with the greater Portland metro area by the legislation.

Numerous Hood River Valley orchardists testified against the bill.

“I think it’s going to hurt everybody … we don’t have any way to pass (the cost) on,” said Kathy Nishimoto, a local orchardist.

Nishimoto, who also works at Duckwall Fuit, explained the packing house has about 50 year-round employees, as well as roughly 300 seasonal workers. The majority are paid in a bracket above minimum wage.

Three wage prongs

The proposal currently before the House would split up Oregon into three categories.

Those tiers were designated based on demographic “self-sufficiency” data, which describes “how much income families of various sizes need to make ends meet without public or private assistance in each county of Oregon,” according to a committee report.

Here’s the geographic breakdown:

• Portland’s urban growth boundary would get the biggest lift, with an increase to $14.75 by 2022.

Democrat legislators said in their proposal the tier system could “address the needs of rural Oregon while still helping all Oregonians who are struggling to get by.”

Johnson said he’s unsure how the regions were chosen based on the demographic data, but he suggested the high cost of housing in Hood River and Wasco Counties could have driven them to a spot in the middle ground.

Nishimoto feels the Region 2 category isn't a good fit for Hood River County.

“How Hood River wound up in the second tier, where we’re with Washington and Multnomah Counties … I don’t know how they did it. It just doesn’t make sense for the agriculture and small businesses,” Nishimoto said.

Johnson expects the final vote on SB 1532 to come before the Oregon House within the next few days.